Thoughts on Learning Balance Before Trying to Keep Up

This weekend I bought my son his first bike.  A balance bike to be exact.  It has no pedals. It instead requires the child to walk along while straddling a miniature bike frame.  Just when they have mastered this trick of perambulating and steering, they lift their feet and glide.  It was explained to me that the hardest part of learning to ride a bike is maintaining one’s balance. Once they understand balance, then pedaling is easy.

I have a lot of emotion not just because I am watching a child ride a bike who this time last year still fed from my breast. I am filled with emotion because I wonder how I will keep this lesson of prioritizing balance rather than myopically pursuing the distant goal at the front of his mind as he moves from infancy to childhood to man. I wonder because it is not a lesson that I have fully learned in my nearly four decades.  So much of my life has flown by like wind, airy and fleeting, while I pursued all the things I was taught made a life secure. 

This summer we will spend a lot of time biking with me walking beside—then running behind—trying to teach him that the pursuit of balance is as much a part of following the path.